"What's the matter with the High Tariff? She's all right!"
This yell, so frequently heard on Eastern land and sea, had penetrated even to the Great Gopher lake, and it reassured the girl more than anything else could have done.
She sat up weakly enough in the boat, and, after waving her hand, with feminine instinct tried to coil her hair and otherwise prepare herself as best she could to receive these angels from the clouds.
"Can you catch?" yelled the professor.
"Try me!" came back a voice undaunted, though enfeebled by long suffering.
The professor coiled a stout, light rope on his arm, shot out a few thundering orders about safety-valves and ballast, and cautiously, but with gymnastic quickness, descended the yielding rounds of the long ladder.
To the lady in the boat, to the passengers in the car it seemed hours before the professor reached the last of the two hundred rounds. It might have been forty seconds.
Swift called out to the young lady encouragingly:
"Hold out a little while longer and you'll be safe!"
"I'm all right now, since you have come." The young woman's trembling voice seemed to lay an actual emphasis on "you" that Swift was selfish enough to take to himself.